For the time being I have elected to launch Xvkbd in the top left hand corner of the screen at a size roughly equivalent to the fixed size Magoo panel. It was stealing the focus from the Magoo panel which was a bit silly as you are hardly likely to want to use the K/B when no app has been launched. I have fixed that by delaying the launch of Magoo.

Radar & Navbar

I have included both but only enabled Radar 0.8. The issue with Navbar was that way too many apps failed to respect its position and launched under it with their toolbars obscured. This then entailed even more switch presses to drag the windows down.

Applications over and above those in Magoo V5 and Magoo (Netbook) V6

The main additions are Chromium 25 and Thunderbird 16.01 (update channel…..so update it to 17.05). At the expense of increasing the ISO size, I have pre-configured Chromium for max speed and ease of use. The latest flash (11.2.202.275) and the cursor themes pack have also been included.
In Chromium you can switch between voice search and your location’s home page via the “home icon” and bookmarks bar icon.

Setup Procedure:

1. Complete the normal "first-run" dialogues and create a savefile.

2. Upon re-booting navigate to the desktop menu and set the global font size to 96 (Access this setting via the PupControl icon and its desktop tab.) Then restart X.

3. If you are using an LCD display, launch Fontwizard from the JWM/desktop menu, tick all boxes & then click on apply. Restart X.

4. From the desktop menu select the “whitelarge” cursor theme then restart X.

5. Open two rox filer windows, the first in your Startup folder and the second in the subdirectory “Screen_Resolution_1920x1080” within the new “ex_startup folder”.

Note:
I intend to create more resolution sub-directories containing suitable versions of this script based on your testing!

Launch Sequence on boot up.

Radar
Xvkbd
Magoo panel with focus and cursor over “Skype”
Mouse moves to “WWW” icon
Message displays on screen and 30 second countdown starts.
After 30 seconds Chromium launches or the app of your choice if the mouse has been moved to its icon prior to the timeout.
The Google voice search page is displayed and after a few second the microphone is automatically activated.
If nothing is said, after about 10 seconds a “cancel/try again” box appears.
The mouse then moves to the “try again” box.

To summarise the “do nothing option” results in access to voice search with nothing to press. Try again requires one press. Launching say Skype or email requires 2 presses just to move the cursor as the mouse click will fire automatically after 30 seconds.

This beta ISO is purely intended to provoke thought and possible solutions!
What are needed are ways to make navigation easier together with ways of reducing the number of presses required to do common things such as moving windows.

The bit I particularly need feedback on is the last line of the “mouse_to_www_1920x1080.sh” script which will need adjusting for different resolutions. It should move the cursor over the “try again” voice search box and currently reads as below. (It will not be in the right location unless you happen to be running at 1920x1080)

Code:

xdotool mousemove_relative -- 674 65

Please edit the x,y coordinates at the end of the copy in your startup folder to suit your resolution and let me have the details.

The bit I particularly need feedback on is the last line of the “mouse_to_www_1920x1080.sh” script which will need adjusting for different resolutions. It should move the cursor over the “try again” voice search box and currently reads as below. (It will not be in the right location unless you happen to be running at 1920x1080)

Hey ETP

If you're interested, here's my attempt to make "the last move" properly, regardless of sceen resolution.
The code below "greps" that Google pop-up window by its dimensions, reads its position and moves mouse cursor over there.
The only (I hope) thing that affects pop-up's dimensions is global font size, but I covered the default 78 and, recommended by you, 96 DPI.
Just add the below code to your script:

Code:

# The following code is the replacement for this line:
# xdotool mousemove_relative -- -674 -65

BTW: If you'd like to cover also other DPIs, just run this line in terminal, press (quickly) that microphone button in Google and wait for output.

Code:

sleep 15; xwininfo -root -tree

One of first lines (you need to follow your hunch ) should contain what we need, eg (78 DPI):
0x1a006ff5 "Chromium": ("chromium" "Chromium") 186x126+688+495 +688+495
and 186x126 is the wanted W(idth) and H(eight).

It's kinda MacGyver-ish solution and tested only in VBox, so I'm not sure if it will work at all in your and others' cases...but it's worth a try, IMHO.

If you're interested, here's my attempt to make "the last move" properly, regardless of screen resolution.
The code below "greps" that Google pop-up window by its dimensions, reads its position and moves mouse cursor over there.
The only (I hope) thing that affects pop-up's dimensions is global font size, but I covered the default 78 and, recommended by you, 96 DPI.
Just add the below code to your script:

Thanks for your script. The use of 96 DPI plus fontwizard are essential as the benefits of antialiasing only become apparent at 96 DPI and I have pre-configured other font sizes based on the assumption that both will be applied. There are I think, other things that may impact on the pop-up's dimensions such as page level zoom, which is retained by all browsers and also a default font/font size change within the browser. If the width or height are a single pixel out, the window will not be found and a move may take place but only relative to the Chromium window.

Try as I might, I could not get your script or any other combinations of the various Xdotool commands to work properly. One possibility is “xdotool key Tab Tab Tab” together with an icon to then issue a "return". I cannot add that to the string as no retry may be needed and if not, it would cause something to launch on the webpage displayed._________________Regards ETP
Pups: -- Blue V6 -- Chromebook V2 -- ChromeCast V3 -- UCF2FS

ETP mentioned in passing that "for now" he "elected to launch Xvkbd in the top left hand corner of the screen at a size roughly equivalent to the fixed size Magoo panel. It was stealing the focus from the Magoo panel which was a bit silly as you are hardly likely to want to use the K/B when no app has been launched. I have fixed that by delaying the launch of Magoo." My thinking is that the Pup should boot to desktop ready to be used. For that reason, I've dropped the Magoo Pet in favor of fbpanel and have been attempting to configure xvkbd so that, on bootup, it is adjacent to radar at radar's default bottom right position. See attached. Xvkbd can be started via a script which sets its location and dimensions. The only desktop icon won't be present in the final version. The xvkbd_start is a symlink I used for easily changing startup arguments arguments. Eventually, it will find its way into the Startup folder. Note the "House" on Jwm's taskbar: it opens /mnt/home. I figure the need for access to other partitions will be infrequent.
At any rate, xvkbd's documentation includes instructions on how to open xvkbd at a specified location and with specified dimensions. As my desktop is 1600x900, this is the script I used, code:

#!/bin/sh
xvkbd -geometry 850x180+595+650 -always-on-top &

850x180 define the width and height, respectively. 596+650 identify the width and height co-ordinates for the top right corner of the keyboard. (Oddly, given that the width of the keyboard appears first, I think the first positioning number for the height placement co-ordinate. Set this up on my Thinkpad about 2 hours ago).

The problem is that they are dependent on the current screen resolution. That will vary from one installation to another, and one of our objectives is to present the user with something which will "just work: no fiddling necessary." I've spent several hours googling for a way to determine, separately, the current width and height of display. Once those are determined, they can be applied to a formula to set xvkbd's width and height relative to the screen's width and height.
The "solutions" I found either required installing python, or programming in C or didn't work. I'd prefer something which could be used by a "stock" puppy. I'm using wary 5.5 as my test bed. Every "stock" puppy already has built-in tools to make such determination as they come with several applications which report current screen dimensions. Just not in a format I know how to manipulate.

Other things which may be of interest:
Although I'm running wary, I obtained the fbpanel.pet from here: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=527539#527539 and new_pfbpanel.pet from here: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=538478#538478. They worked OOTB, providing 8 launchers. I configured rox's taskbar to include 5 more. Rox's taskbar can be configured to Very Large. fbpanel comes with a configuration application. I'm not certain what the maximum size of launcher icons can be. Although the panel is set to hide unless "moused-over" at 50x50 the panel seems to be inadvertently moused-over too frequently. The picture shows them at 40x40: easy targets, yet out of the way when not needed.
If some of the icons look familiar, it's because I've shamelessly flinched them from Magoo. I also plagiarized magoo's scripts for email, weather and show desktop. Thanks ETP.
Although Seamonkey remains to handle email, I've added firefox. Firefox has an addon --just search addons for mouseless-- which enables just that. After it's installed there will appear numbers next to webpage elements, such as address-links. Typing a number and pressing return will open a tab to the indicated webpage, which also shows numbered elements. Firefox also has several "Speed Dials." I installed the one recommended by, I think, Lifehacker. Although not as nice as opera's, it seems to work well. On opening firefox, the user is one-click away from 8 favorite websites; which is why I didn't have to include a "news" launcher in fbpanel. Speed dial will handle more than 8, but then requires the user to click for the other displays.
fbpanel's radio button opens exprimo's umplayer. You can find the download link, and that for the required QT, here: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=658498#658498. Umplayer provides both Shoutcast for finding and listening to streaming radio, and Youtube viewer for searching for and playing youtube vids. Once opened umplayer can be controlled entirely via the keyboard, including starting the Shoutcast and youtube modules (although their default hot-keys should be modified). The application works fine, except that some of the pictures brought up by youtube's search box are blank.
On jwm's taskbar is a launcher for xfe-staticFOX-1.32.1-i486.pet. You'll find a lnk to download it here: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=688159#688159. Xfe is a dual pane + tree file manager which can be controlled entirely via the keyboard.

Nice work! Thanks for the tips on how to position xvkbd. I've been wanting to know that.

I wonder if some of the positioning issues could be overcome by having window positions referenced to the top left corner (which is what the window manager sees as the "origin"). That way the resolution would have less effect on the positioning.

What I mean is something like: Have the menu along the top of screen (rather than bottom), then have Radar just below the menu bar and up against the left of screen, then have xvkbd just to the right of radar.

That way it doesn't matter how wide/tall the screen is, all these major "command functions" would be at top left.

The problem is that they are dependent on the current screen resolution. That will vary from one installation to another, and one of our objectives is to present the user with something which will "just work: no fiddling necessary." I've spent several hours googling for a way to determine, separately, the current width and height of display. Once those are determined, they can be applied to a formula to set xvkbd's width and height relative to the screen's width and height.
The "solutions" I found either required installing python, or programming in C or didn't work. I'd prefer something which could be used by a "stock" puppy. I'm using wary 5.5 as my test bed. Every "stock" puppy already has built-in tools to make such determination as they come with several applications which report current screen dimensions. Just not in a format I know how to manipulate.

Changed to the "small" version of the word list by downloading it from the ubuntu webpage I mentioned a couple of posts back. Downloaded and unpacked the .deb; moved dict folder to usr/share and renamed the within text file "words" --without the quotes, after deleting the older larger word file.
Word completion with the smaller list seems to work better than I expected. Once turned on by clicking xvkbd on the keyboard lower left corner and selecting word completion, a box appears on the screen. As you type using xvkbd's keyboard words beginning with the letters type appear in the box. All that's necessary to complete the word being typed is to click the desired word in the box. Of course, this means the mouse cursor has to leave the keyboard, but the target application remains in xvkbd's focus and doesn't have to be re-established. I'm not certain that it is less productive than LibreOffice's automatic word completion which seems to insist on the similar word I first typed when I actually want to use a different word based on the same root. If the word you want isn't shown, but a similar word is, you can click on the similar word and then backspace/delete as necessary. Backspacing, however, confuses xvkbd. When you begin typing letters again "Word completion" sees it as a new word and will continue to do so until you click the space bar.
But there's another problem to consider. The word completion module uses display space. It getting very crowed. I wonder how xvkbd handles multiple virtual desktops, something I've always done without.
Before experimenting with xvkbd's word completion I looked to see if Abiword might have a plugin giving it LibreOffice's word-completion functionality. It didn't. But that lead me to test musher0's abiword 2.9.2, http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=648142#648142. It wouldn't run in wary --missing libs-- but probably will in precise derivatives. So I next tried technosaurus's 2.8.2, http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=392817#392817, which had "all plugins." In wary, it required ttuuxxx's wv pet. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=393086#393086. Among the tools included, and callable via the keyboard, are google and wikpedia modules. After a typed word is selected (Shift-direction key) Alt-t (=Menu>Tools) directional key to selection on menu, Enter to select it, the default browser will open and do either a google or wikipedia search of the selected word.

mikesLr

p.s. Just re-read greengeek's post above. Moving "controls" to the top of the display would work well for everyone who wasn't habituated to expect the keyboard to be below the target program, which means almost everyone.

Since I find it easy to move open windows around, minimize them, and click on minimized ones to re-display them, I've never employed more than one desktop. But above I mentioned the problem about declining available display space and wondered if employing more than one desktop might help if opening more than one target application was desired.
Tried switching to a second desktop. Neither xvkbd nor radar were present. Clicking xvkbd's menu listing opened it. To make it easier to test in various pups, I had created a pet of radar, giving it a menu entry. Clicking that entry did nothing. If I recall correctly, SFR built radar so that it would first test if an instance was already running, and on finding that condition, exit. My pet-with-menu-entry is just to facilitate testing. As I mentioned, either radar or NavBar will most likely be started on bootup. A user will have little reason to either turn it off, or try to start a second instance of it's running: except when employing multiple virtual desktops. So I think it safe to eliminate the "multiple instance test."

Radar
Xvkbd
Magoo panel with focus and cursor over “Skype”
Mouse moves to “WWW” icon
Message displays on screen and 30 second countdown starts.
After 30 seconds Chromium launches or the app of your choice if the mouse has been moved over its icon prior to the 30 second timeout.
The Google voice search page is displayed and after a few second the microphone is automatically activated.
If nothing is said, after about 10 seconds a “cancel/try again” box appears.
The mouse remains static but the “try again” box is then given keyboard focus so that a “return” key command can be issued from Radar. (Subsequent retries will require mouse navigation to the “try again button” followed by the issue of a left click)

To summarise the “do nothing option” results in access to voice search with nothing to press. Launching say Skype or email requires 2 presses just to move the cursor over another Magoo panel icon as the mouse click will fire automatically after 30 seconds.

Final Thoughts

Whilst this pup is the first of the litter the more choice we can give Will the better. I hope it does not turn out to be the runt!

I very much see it as something for new users to cut their teeth on and to become familiar with navigation and the single switch operation provided by Radar. I note that SFR has just issued a DOTPET and I hope to do the same if this RC passes muster. The two pets in conjunction could then be applied to any Puppy to make it suitable for use by the severely disabled.

Have fun testing and don’t forget the extra treats which have caused the pup to put on some weight.

The changes are mainly cosmetic in order to distinguish it from the Magoo ISOs.
It does however include SFR’s “OneSwitch-1.0.pet” which is used to launch Xvkbd rather than it starting automatically on boot-up. The “OneSwitch” theme has been tweaked to fit in better with Chromium.

There is a possible alternative to keyboard surgery that you might like to consider in the form of a solenoid. The type I have in mind is to be found in the standard “Ding Dong” type door bell. I have one of these and it has operated without problem since 1964.

It is the 6 volt solenoid within it which is of interest. Basically it is a tube wound with copper wire. Within the tube is a metallic core with a nylon plunger at either end. It is self centred by springs and only the plungers emerge at each end.
When current is applied the magnetic field generated by the coil drives the plunger one way about a quarter of an inch. When current is removed the collapsing magnetic field drives it the other way. Positioned vertically on a suitable stand, like a gallows, it would simulate a rapid key press.

A standard 6v DC mains adapter supplying at least 500ma could be used with your switch wired into the DC side. The stand would have to have some vertical adjustment on the arm holding the solenoid such that the end of the plunger was gently resting on the pause key.

Such a contraption could be made of an old piece of quarter inch plywood for the base and a dowel, end of broom handle or shaft of an old wooden spoon. A wooden arm with a hole drilled in it could then travel up and down the shaft. An easy way to secure it would be with car hose clips above and below once optimally positioned.
Alternatively, just pack beneath the keyboard to bring it up to the correct height.

I see no reason why this mechanical key press would not work. It also has the advantage of working with any keyboard including laptops.